Sleeping Beauty (1959)

 Sleeping Beauty (1959)

6/10

Starring the voice of

Mary Costa

Bill Shirley

Eleanor Audley

Verna Felton

Barbara Luddy

 

Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman and Les Clark

 

Back in 1959, Walt Disney himself produced the Charles Perrault fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. This is way before Angelina Jolie dawned the costume and gave us the origin story to the villain of the story Maleficent (2014). I for one when younger in the early 90s always found this animation like a dud and did not very much enjoyed the plot. Even seeing it now, I still feel Disney missed the mark when it came to this movie. I recall my mother buying us a VHS of another adaptation of this fairytale which faired better to this one done by Disney himself, which was the last fairytale movie he produced.

 

The plot of sleeping beauty boils around the same measure across board. There is a young lady named Aurora, she is the daughter of King Stefan and Queen Leah. The couple have struggled with childlessness for years and the birth of Aurora was a crowning moment and declared a holiday. Among the guest of these momentous day were the three good fairies which came to lay their blessings on the child. One evil fairy was not invited named Maleficent. She was upset at this and laid a curse on Aurora – a curse which can only be broken by true love first kiss.

The King and Queen for fear for their daughter’s life and gave her to the fairies who cared for her until she was grown and we watch as Aurora is unable to evade the curse and wait for the deliverance of her sleep without waking by true love first kiss.

 

Over the years this 16^th Disney animated movie have come to be seen as something of cultural significant like the needed passage of animated movies you have to see as a child. After seeing this you can now advance to the new high-octane things that the mouse house is dropping these days. I feel that in the near future all these renaissance Disney classics will be too tamed for children of the future. With the ducking and diving that comes with other Disney classics like Zootopia or the intense battle of a father trying to save his son in Finding Nemo, tamed animations as this are losing their audience.

Even at the time of release this movie was not a box office masterpiece and it took many future re-releases before this movie turned a profit. In fact the movie’s bad performance during its time of release led to a dark turn in Disney’s production company as it resulted to layoffs. This movie’s production cost of $6 million was at the time the most expensive animated feature film ever made.

Like all Disney Renaissance classics this I believe comes in the classic box set which will be suitable for children to see, but seeing it again I still get the same mixed feelings I got seeing it for the first time when I was younger.